Want To Fix Healthcare? Acknowledge That It's the Responsibility Of the Individual

The best of the defenders of the Affordable Care Act advance an argument that centers on the economic benefits from having more people with access to healthcare. The argument essentially boils down to “having an insured populace optimizes our economy because an insured workforce is more resilient.” They argue that an insured populace, with ready access to healthcare, is more likely to perform at their peak level when freed from concerns regarding health. The indirect costs of providing care for the uninsured, they argue, are too big a burden to be ignored.

It is indisputable that, for the majority of individuals, obtaining health insurance of some sort—catastrophic or ordinary—is an advisable financial decision. Health care plays a crucial role in one’s life and can literally be life-saving in certain situations; health insurance can protect financial solvency in such situations. It is also clear that having healthy employees who maintain their health is in the interest of every corporation, as employee well-being is an important component of profitability.

While these facts suggest that it may be a prudent decision for an individual to purchase health insurance or firms to offer health insurance as an employment perk, there is no justification for the government to nullify individual rights by forcing individuals to provide for the healthcare of others—irrespective of the effect on the national economy.

A government’s sole function is the protection of individual rights; all other functions the modern U.S. government has assumed are usurpations which have required the violation of the very rights the government was established to protect. This strictly delimited function of government requires the establishment of a police force, a military, and a judiciary system. As such, the government’s position on the economy of the nation should not be to steer it or bolster it, but to stay out of it.

As Yaron Brook and Don Watkins write in Free Market Revolution, “If a rationally selfish individual is told that by surrendering his paycheck he will help ‘the economy,’ his attitude should be ‘To hell with you; it won’t help my economy!’”

When one removes the veneer of the economic argument for universal healthcare provided at taxpayer expense, one is left with the idea that each individual is his brother’s keeper (i.e., altruism) and that individual rights should be sacrificed for the Volksgemeinschaft, or people’s community. Cloaking altruism, sacrifice, and collectivism by speaking in terms of optimizing the progress of the economy or the nation is a common tactic used to foist myriad rights-violating schemes on the population. There are many decisions that individuals could make that would improve the economic status of the U.S. For example, individuals could spend less on cigarettes, gambling, and alcohol and more on computers, mobile phones, and education. But, the above does not translate into forcing others to facilitate those decisions.

Another aspect often overlooked in this debate is that the reason why current healthcare is able to produce such economic calamity is because of its cost—a direct consequence of the market-distorting effects of government social insurance schemes which caused a near universal disregard of cost amongst healthcare providers and patients. Consequently, the inflated cost of healthcare has necessitated the purchase of health insurance for many. However, if policymakers were serious about reducing the number of uninsured, they could immediately make individual healthcare more affordable for individuals by making insurance policies 100% tax deductible for individuals (as it is for employers who provide it to their employees).

A true solution to all the problems with healthcare deliver y in the U.S. must begin with realizing that healthcare is, at base, an individual responsibility. Those who rationally evaluate their circumstances and make provisions for their own future healthcare needs must not be sacrificed to those who do not.

Amesh Adalja is a quadruple board-certified physician and a clinical assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

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